David is an attorney who lives in Madrona, works in downtown Seattle, and previously lived in several other Seattle neighborhoods, Kirkland, and Bellevue. He writes mostly about King County Metro and how to improve the regional bus network. David drove for Metro from 2000 to 2005, and loved the job. His regular commute is by foot or on the 2.
Note: This is the first and longest in a series of four posts describing the details of Metro’s proposed “Alternative 1” restructure, which would take effect at the same time as the planned March 2016 opening of Sound Transit’s University Link. “Alternative 1” is the more ambitious of Metro’s two U-Link proposals. Our overview of both proposals, and our short description of the minimum-change “Alternative 2,” is here. Although these posts are under my byline, they owe a huge amount to the hard work of the entire STB staff, particularly Zach Shaner.
Map of frequent NE Seattle routes under Alt 1. Map by Oran Viriyincy.
There’s one essential fact about Alternative 1 in Northeast Seattle: It creates a real 15-minute grid, no excuses. Overnight, there would be 15-minute or better bus service, all day, to almost every place east of I-5 and north of the ship canal—including neighborhoods far from a Link station, and a huge number of places that have never had 15-minute bus service, ever. And the service would be in an easy-to-understand grid pattern. Alternative 1 would establish all of these frequent corridors, spaced 1/2 to 1 mile apart, with newly frequent corridors in blue:
North-South:
UW Station-University Way-Ravenna-Roosevelt Way (to Northgate): Route 67 (10 minutes)
(additional service south of N 65th St on 15-minute Route 45)
Roosevelt Way/15th Ave NE (north of Northgate): Routes 347/348 (15 minutes)
This morning, Metro sent out a press release discussing the proposed U-Link changes it released last night. Also in the press release was confirmation of another Link-related rumor that has been swirling for a while. In September 2015, Sound Transit will start testing Link trains on the U-Link alignment, which will increase the number of Link trains in the tunnel, especially during peak hours, when a train will arrive every six minutes.
To create space for these extra trains, six peak-hour bus routes serving North Seattle, Shoreline, Issaquah, and Sammamish are leaving the tunnel, effective September 26, 2015. Northbound, routes 76, 77, and 316 will use either Third or Fourth Avenue (Metro has yet to confirm which). Southbound, routes 216, 218, and 219 will pick up on Second Avenue.
To put it mildly, joint operations has not worked well during afternoon peak since Metro and ST began collecting fares on buses at tunnel stations. Perhaps there is hope that reducing the number of peak bus operations will make things a little bit smoother.
UPDATE: Metro has created a survey about the changes described here. Please take it once you feel comfortable with the concepts; our stories next week may help. Metro’s Jeff Switzer says: “The 200+ comments are great, and we’re reading them, but it would help to capture them for tracking and analysis via the survey.”
Yesterday evening, Metro and Sound Transit made public for the first time their proposals for restructuring bus service around Sound Transit’s University Link light-rail extension. The fully tunneled extension will add two new Link stations: Capitol Hill Station near Broadway and John, and University of Washington Station next to Husky Stadium. The trip between UW Station and Westlake Station should take just 6-8 minutes. As of now, U-Link is scheduled to open to the public in March 2016. A Metro and Sound Transit service change, when the agencies will restructure bus service, will happen at the same time. (UPDATE: Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray emails to say: “[This post] says U Link opens in March. Right now we’re still just saying First Quarter.” This leaves open the possibility that U-Link could open before the restructure takes effect.)
Metro is taking the lead on developing the restructures, because the vast majority of the impact is to Metro’s network. In a package of information released late yesterday, Metro is offering two alternatives for public comment. “Alternative 1” represents a major rethinking of bus service in several areas affected by U-Link, while “Alternative 2” seeks to keep change to a minimum. Metro designed both alternatives to be revenue-neutral; neither alternative spends an extra dollar compared to today’s bus network. Metro has created route maps of both alternatives, which include midday, peak, and Eastside route networks, as well as frequency maps.
One thing that is absolutely critical to understanding this proposal: Metro did not take extra funding the City of Seattle is providing because of Proposition 1 into account in designing either alternative. Prop 1 only provides 6 years of taxing authority, and Metro wants to build a network it can sustain indefinitely. So everything you will read below, in upcoming posts, and in Metro’s materials is purely funded by Metro, without Prop 1. Seattle’s Prop 1 funds would add to these proposals. The city has not yet decided exactly what to add, but its additions will likely resemble SDOT’s choices to improve the current network. Bill Bryant of SDOT’s Transit Division told STB’s Zach Shaner by email that the city would need to develop specifics by late summer or early fall.
Broadly speaking, the restructures cover four areas: Northeast Seattle, Capitol Hill, SR-520 bridge service, and to a lesser extent, Downtown Seattle and South Lake Union. In the coming days, we will have four posts that will go into down-in-the-weeds detail about what Alternative 1 would mean for each of these areas. For now, we’ll look at the big picture.
SDOT is conducting an online survey about the Madison Street BRT project, which is in the planning process. This project is intended to provide fast and frequent bus service along Madison Street between downtown and 23rd Avenue, using dedicated right-of-way. The last day to take the survey is today.
Madison BRT project map, courtesy of SDOT.
The survey asks for community input on design priorities for the BRT right-of-way; priorities for transfers to and from the BRT; the location of future bike routes serving the corridor; and priorities for pedestrian improvement. The transfer question is particularly important because transfers from Madison/Marion to 3rd Avenue bus service and the downtown transit tunnel are currently bad, and would have gotten even worse under early draft Madison BRT plans.
If you care about the future of the Madison corridor, please take the survey this afternoon.
These riders will be very happy in September. Photo by Oran Viriyincy.
We (well, at least incorrigible transit nerds) have been waiting with bated breath since the passage of Seattle’s Proposition 1 in November to see the contract between the City of Seattle and King County Metro which is required under the text of Prop 1. It’s finally here, posted to the King County Council’s website as an attachment to the ordinance through which the Council will most likely approve it.
There are all sorts of interesting details in the contract language which we will probably poke at in future posts. But for now we wanted to share the good stuff: specific service improvements. The improvements affect most routes in the city of Seattle. About half of them will be implemented in June, and the other half in September. Many of the June improvements are subtle schedule changes to improve reliability (mostly increasing run time and recovery time), while the September improvements are a bit more visible.
The City of Seattle chose the improvements in two ways. First, all of the reliability and overcrowding improvements identified as necessary in Metro’s 2014 Service Guidelines Report were included. Second, once those needs were taken care of, city staff selected improvements after analysis applying the county’s Service Guidelines, the city’s Transit Master Plan, and Metro route performance data. Broadly, the improvements fit into two categories: 1) reliability improvements on existing service, and 2) new trips on existing routes, including both peak and off-peak frequency improvements. There are no restructures in this initial round of improvements, for obvious reasons of speed and ease of implementation. Nevertheless, these improvements will make the system significantly easier to use, especially nights and weekends. They should also relieve some dysfunction during rush hours. Specifics below the jump.
Monday afternoon, the County Council voted to table an ordinance incorporating the February 2015 Metro cuts recently proposed by an ad hoc committee of County Executive Dow Constantine and a few Councilmembers. The Council’s decision has the effect of postponing the 2015 cuts indefinitely. Without further action, Metro will continue to operate the same network it operates today, with this week’s cuts remaining in place.
The Council’s action was surprising because it approved the February cuts in principle just two months ago. That resulted from a compromise between a Council faction led by Councilmember Rod Dembowski, who sought in June to postpone all of the cuts except for this week’s, and Constantine, who doggedly insisted that all but a few of the cuts remained necessary despite higher forecast revenues.
A couple of things have changed since July, though. First, King County’s Office of Economic and Financial Analysis (OEFA), which is independent of either the Executive or the Council, released a new forecast with a significant increase in projected sales-tax revenue. Second, Constantine released his 2015-16 proposed budget, which substantially reduced the number of hours that needed to be cut — although it continued to treat the February cuts, along with another small future round of cuts, as necessary.
Yesterday afternoon, I caught up with both Dembowski and Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond by phone. Each was gracious, knowledgeable, and willing to talk about the situation in substantive detail. Their answers revealed a real philosophical divide about how to manage potential risks to the Metro system, and helped clarify a situation which those who follow Metro (including all STB staffers) have found very confusing. I’ll present a summary of each view below the jump.
First, though, I should provide a bit of background that’s necessary to understand either one. Twice before, Metro has been affected by funding crises at times when it had promised to expand. In 2000, the combined effect of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 695, which eliminated Metro’s permanent motor-vehicle excise tax (MVET) funding, and that year’s “dot-com” recession resulted in a failure to implement 400,000 hours of new service which had been promised to riders in the late 1990s. Again in 2006, Metro promised nearly 600,000 hours of new service through the voter-approved “Transit Now” sales-tax increase, and again Metro found itself using the revenue to backfill existing service instead when the Great Recession hit.
On Monday, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued his proposed budget (warning: 100 MB (!) PDF) for the 2015/2016 biennium. The headline news for Metro is no surprise, as Metro and the executive announced it a few days ago: 400,000 annual service hours will be cut from the 2013-2014 baseline level, with 320,000 of those spread between service changes next week and next February, and another 80,000 to be cut in March 2016 if the revenue picture fails to make further improvement. (City-level measures such as November’s Seattle-only vote may defer or eliminate a few of these cuts, but the county’s budgeting process can’t take uncertain city funding into account.) The headline impact is a $21 million annual reduction in Metro’s direct service budget.
A detailed read of the budget proposal, though, reveals a few interesting tidbits that were not previously public. I’ll list some of those here, below the jump. This thread is an open thread with respect to Metro and King County Transportation budgeting; please feel free to discuss the items I list or anything else you see in the transportation section of the proposed budget.
When we last checked in on the King County Council’s erratic treatment of Metro’s budget crisis, the Council — after a veto by Executive Dow Constantine of a plan that would have postponed nearly all of the cuts without providing any new revenues, acting only on hope — passed a compromise ordinance which implemented this month’s cuts and provided for additional cuts, yet to be specified, in February 2015. The ordinance established an “ad hoc committee on transit reductions” to make specific recommendations for those cuts, which (the ordinance provided) were to be consistent with King County’s Strategic Plan for Public Transportation and Metro’s Service Guidelines.
The ad hoc committee, consisting of Executive Constantine and Councilmembers Joe McDermott, Jane Hague, and Rod Dembowski, made its recommendation on the February cuts last week. (UPDATE: Councilmember Rod Dembowski’s office reached out this afternoon to tell me that the ad hoc committee’s recommended cuts were entirely devised by Metro staff.) Yesterday, the Executive transmitted that recommendation to the Council, and Metro published the specific proposed cuts. The cuts and restructures are generally similar to those proposed for February in Metro’s original plan, but there are some interesting differences which we will look at below, particularly for Wallingford and Fremont residents.
If the “Plan D” Seattle-only measure on the November ballot succeeds, then the Executive would postpone the February cuts to June 2015, in order to give Metro and the City of Seattle time to determine how to proceed. The Seattle ballot measure includes language saying “the first priority for the funding is to preserve existing routes and prevent King County Metro’s proposed February 2015 service cuts and restructures.” The cuts proposed yesterday continue to include multiple restructures, and it is not clear whether the City of Seattle would or could allow those restructures to be implemented with increased service levels at a later date than February 2015.
Metro Route 72, possibly to be saved. Photo by Kris Leisten.
This past Monday morning, Transportation Choices hosted a community briefing on the upcoming Yes for Seattle Transit campaign, which will campaign for a Yes vote in this November’s election on the Seattle-only transit funding measure we’ve previously called “Plan D.” I attended the briefing along with about 100 community activists, politicians, transit professionals, and other journalists. Little new information was presented at the briefing, which served mostly as a kickoff event for the campaign, but it’s a good opportunity to remind our Seattle-resident readers what the ballot measure and campaign are about.
The ballot measure, primarily championed by Mayor Ed Murray and City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, would include a $60 vehicle license fee and a 0.1% sales tax, imposed only within the city, to benefit the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD). These are the same funding sources that would have been imposed countywide under Proposition 1, defeated in April’s special election. Most of the funds raised would be devoted to saving bus service on routes that exclusively or primarily (at least 80% of stops within Seattle) serve Seattle. A small portion of the funds would be set aside to fund core routes between Seattle and other jurisdictions, in partnership with those jurisdictions. The mayor and Councilmember Rasmussen expect that the measure would raise roughly enough money to forestall all of the currently planned or expected Metro cuts in Seattle exceptthose scheduled for this coming September, which are expected to go through as planned and not be restored. Metro has indicated that it is ready to work with Seattle (or any other jurisdiction that’s interested) to restore service using local funding.
Mayor Murray has made clear, and reiterated at the briefing, that he sees this funding as a stopgap, to be used only until there is a permanent, countywide source of funding that restores Metro service to current levels.
Given that the defeated Proposition 1 enjoyed 66% support within the City of Seattle, and the November general election is expected to have a more pro-transit electorate, the players involved expect the measure to pass. The principal source of controversy with respect to the measure, to the extent there is any, is a sentence in the resolution authorizing the measure that reads:
The first priority for the funding is to preserve existing routes and prevent King County Metro’s proposed February 2015 service cuts and restructures.
Some activists who spoke during the briefing’s Q&A session made it clear that they see this sentence as preventing any restructure of Metro service for the entire length of time Seattle is funding Metro through the STBD. Both Mayor Murray and Councilmember Rasmussen disagreed with this interpretation, but neither wanted to discuss specific service decisions at this event, and neither would address the merits of restructuring. In any case, since the City Council voted to put the measure on the ballot, King County punted on its originally proposed February 2015 restructures, which would have brought major change to the Seattle bus network. The County Council voted instead to cut service for February 2015, but to decide the specifics of the cuts at a later date.
On Tuesday, we talked a bit about Bellevue’s great new Transit Master Plan, which is expected to be adopted next Monday by the Bellevue City Council. The plan’s final detailed product (which is very far from the only useful thing we got out of the process) is divided into two pieces: a “Transit Service Vision Report” laying out a detailed vision of a frequent, gridded Bellevue bus network, and a “Transit Capital Vision Report” which describes capital projects necessary to make Bellevue’s service vision workable and efficient. In October, we covered the network report in some detail. This post is about the capital projects report, which is equally worthy of attention. Other local jurisdictions should pay close attention to Bellevue’s approach to capital projects, because it presents a logical, orderly path toward making a city in which transit trips are safe, easy, and practical from end to end.
The report is divided into four sections which, together, cover the entirety of a transit trip. This is already a welcome departure from most municipal transit plans, which tend to focus exclusively on the on-vehicle aspects of transit planning. Read about each section below the jump.
